Challenge

There are a lot of factors that impact patients’ quality of care, and for patients with chronic conditions like kidney failure, these factors can impact patients’ quality of life. One of the country’s largest kidney care providers saw an opportunity to improve care for patients suffering from kidney-related healthcare issues by using new mobile technology solutions to increase the accuracy, communication and overall experience of care.

New technology solutions could meet any number of existing patient needs, whether that be communication and data sharing with their doctors, or simply providing them with media and other apps to make the time they spend receiving treatment more bearable.

Unfortunately, they found themselves running into familiar problems often encountered with new technology ventures: slow, inconsistent software development projects, inadequate wireless network infrastructure to support the patients, and a growing backlog of projects that never seem to get off the ground. They turned to WWT for help.

Solution

When an organization embarks on new mobile technology rollouts, things can go quickly awry if standards, clear business drivers and a big-picture strategy are not set in place. WWT helped the national healthcare provider create a Mobile Center of Excellence (MCOE) to put proven standards and practices surrounding an organization-wide mobile effort in place.

We worked with senior leadership and executives to understand and help define the overall vision that was driving the push for mobility solutions – a focus on patients having as close to a normal standard of living as soon as possible – and from there derived metrics that would define a successful implementation of that vision, short- and long-term priorities and branding and development standards.

To help the healthcare provider meet the new network infrastructure needs the new mobile vision would require, WWT hosted an onsite executive briefing at our corporate headquarters in St. Louis, MO, where we were able to demonstrate the ability to meet the technical expectations of the project in our Advanced Technology Center (ATC) as well as meet the aggressive rollout demands in our North American Integration Center in St. Louis.

For this project, the healthcare customer chose a cloud-managed Cisco Meraki stack, including gateway, switching, and wireless LAN, which offered the most cost effective management for the thousands of relatively small clinics where they wanted to improve patient wireless access. We showcased our experience and success with projects of similar scope and helped the healthcare company understand that we were entering the deployment as a joint venture. The time we spent scoping and project planning starting with a 14 site pilot engagement, which quickly moved into plans to deploy across thousands of clinical sites, the largest U.S. deployment of Cisco Meraki to date.

Conclusion

The gains in patient experience and customer loyalty created by their new mobile efforts are already becoming visible on the horizon. With a full wireless rollout already in the works, the healthcare provider and WWT are moving quickly to start working through the backlog of 80 business drivers and software solutions the provider would like to put in place. Patient-facing and nurse-facing solutions will start to roll out over the course of the coming year.

The foundation that WWT and the healthcare provider created in building their MCOE is letting them develop and deploy solutions with significantly greater speed and efficiency than ever before. These solutions will ultimately enable the healthcare provider to improve the quality and experience of care – as well as their workers’ productivity – meeting their original goal and vision in the first place: providing their patients with the absolute best possible care.